Word: paean
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Although the pledge has seeped into the popular imagination as a paean to patriotism, religious groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses, who are forbidden to swear secular oaths, have repeatedly gone to court to keep it from becoming a mandatory ritual. In 1972 a federal appeals court ruled that an upstate New York teacher had a right to refuse to participate in the pledge in her classroom. "Patriotism that is forced is a false patriotism," Judge Irving R. Kaufman wrote, "just as loyalty that is coerced is the very antithesis of loyalty...
...ridiculed. He was vilified. He was hated irrationally -- but he was right." With that paean to Robert Kennedy and his long battle against the crime-ridden leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani took on the task that has stymied Kennedy and other prosecutors for the past 30 years. Giuliani, however, comes to the fight armed with a powerful weapon...
Easy to see why My Life as a Dog was last year's most popular foreign- language film in the U.S. For all its hints of death and humiliation, the picture has a jaunty air -- a Truffaut paean to childhood, set to a silly, danceable beat. In this village everyone is ripe for fond laughter: the uncle whose rapport with Ingemar puts his wife at a distance; the old lodger whose only pleasure is reading lingerie ads; the tomboy who bandages her breasts to masquerade for a last summer as one of the boys. At the picture's heart...
...North told Congress last June, under oath, that he barely knew Owen. In fact, as Owen's testimony to the congressional Iran-contra investigators establishes, the two had been working together closely for two years. At the end of his testimony, Owen read a paean canonizing his mentor. Sample line: ". . . at crude altars in the jungle, candles burn...
Jane and Michael Stern, young, humorous and well-educated Easterners, have become the self-styled clowns of American cooking. Where other critics travel haute, they take the low road to diners, cafeterias, luncheonettes and truck stops. Their first cookbook, Square Meals, was a paean to the Dark Ages of American cooking. The authors took culinary pratfalls advocating recipes for molded salads, casseroles based on canned soups and tuna fish, etc. Their new offering, Real American Food (Knopf; $19.95), is another, far more appetizing collection of recipes gathered from assorted low-down eateries. They include few recipes from fancy restaurants because...